Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Using Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
Gold
Thursday, March 10, 2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Share the love for this talk
Using Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
Speakers: Catherine Blizzard
Link:

Summary

Catherine's talk will cover what an advanced, mixed method team looks like when it covers a broad range of research disciplines (e.g. data, customer experience, market research, digital research etc.), as well as how to make this work for the business and keep pace with ever-changing consumer behaviors.

Key Insights

  • Transforming a research team by focusing on how they work, not just what they do, can unlock strategic business value.

  • Organizing research around tasks and business priorities rather than specialist silos accelerates creativity and impact.

  • Using multi-discipline virtual teams enables effective use of a small, fixed headcount to meet broad challenges.

  • Transparent and collaborative project allocation helps address staff concerns about workload and status changes.

  • Coaching managers to develop their teams without micromanaging fosters leadership growth at all levels.

  • Aligning research priorities with business goals and reframing stakeholder requests enhances relevance and efficiency.

  • Adopting a triage decision tree empowers junior staff to respond swiftly to routine queries while escalating strategic ones.

  • Introducing 'go-to' points or account managers for stakeholder groups helps maintain personal connections despite a flexible team structure.

  • Careful planning and incremental communication are critical to easing transition fatigue and resistance in change programs.

  • Multi-skilled teams improve job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and generate award-winning, innovative insights that shift business decisions.

Notable Quotes

"The big question was how do you achieve ambitious transformation with only nine people serving a division of 3,000."

"We spent 90% of our resource marking everyone's homework—tactical queries and performance reporting—rather than driving strategy."

"We threw the whole team structure aside and started commissioning work based on multiple skill sets at all levels."

"Budgets are allocated by project, not by specialism, allowing investment to match scale and scope of business questions."

"Project leadership can be allocated to the right discipline, not necessarily the most senior person."

"The emphasis of managers is coaching and development, not signing off or overseeing everything."

"The transition felt radical, moving from an overly reactive approach to a focused planning mindset."

"We created decision trees so junior team members can quickly decide what requests to handle and what to escalate."

"Stakeholders wanted a research team that did everything they asked, so we kind of did this transformation in spite of them."

"We now have the capability to tell the World Service what to do, rather than just tell them what the audience thinks."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sam Proulx
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Carl Turner
You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Laura Weiss
Turn Down the Heat: 3 Ways to Handle Conflict in the Moment
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Sam Proulx
To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Jilanna Wilson
Distributed Design Operations Management
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Dr Chloe Sharp
Using Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Jaskiran Kang
Why Community is Key to Professionalizing Design (Videoconference)
2022 • Civic Design Community
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Darian Davis
Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Amy Marquez
INVEST: Discussion
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Making People the X-Factor in the Enterprise
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Michele Marut
Research Repositories Reconsidered (Videoconference)
2019 • DesignOps Community
Sam Proulx
Understanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Francesca Barrientos, PhD
You Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Edgar Anzaldua Moreno
Using Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
John Calhoun
Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold

More Videos

"This kind of reflective work can turn into therapy, so we have to be careful how we facilitate it."

Shaping design, designers and teams

November 8, 2018

Sabrina Mach

"Bringing design on an equal eye level with technology and business is the starting point."

Sabrina Mach Nina Wainwright

How to Design Your Design Operating Model

September 29, 2021

Samuel Proulx

"When you design for the edges, you get the middle for free."

Samuel Proulx

Invisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought

December 3, 2024

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"You can’t just throw another tool at accessibility problems; training and culture are just as important."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility (Videoconference)

May 26, 2022

Briana Thomas

"Product design and development can often mirror what happens in a chef’s kitchen: lots of coordination and spinning plates behind the scenes."

Briana Thomas

The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams

September 24, 2024

Adam Cutler

"You need strong regional players with negotiation skills to navigate the split loyalties in global teams."

Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan Worthman

Discussion

June 8, 2016

"We had to partner closely with information security to ensure every piece of data in research files was tracked and compliant."

Operationalizing DesignOps

November 7, 2018

Leah Buley

"If you are spinning and can’t get your team aligned, the issue is you have not talked to real customers recently."

Leah Buley Joe Natoli

Ask Me Anything with Leah Buley and Joe Natoli, co-authors of The User Experience Team of One (2nd edition)

October 8, 2024

Nathan Shedroff

"Design researchers know customers better than almost anyone else in the organization, yet they are rarely invited into strategy processes."

Nathan Shedroff

Double Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically

March 31, 2020